Hi, We're live at the Duncan Music Lounge here at iHeart Radio and Hartford, the home of Art Network flagship Fox Sports. Right do in ninety seven nine Hard for Mike Chrispino along with Jim Mora. So we recapped last year in that first segment. Now we're looking ahead. How do you view the next year after you've had success? Is it going to be harder to get people up to that level again or do you just start at square one and try to build something again.
Well, you started square one and try to build something again knowing that you have some momentum that you've got to capture. I think one of the things that helped us winning last year is that we were able to bring in maybe more talent than we had been in the past because we were more attractive to more talented players,
and so that helped us. But in terms of our focus, you know, it's right back to square one, and it's you know, every day trying to be the very best that we can be, working to our standard every day and focus on what matters and not making excuses and
holding each other accountable and all those things. You know. See, what's interesting now is with the transfer portal is that you have to kind of rebuild, you know, your culture every single year because there's so many new players coming in that they're not indoctrinated into how you do things and how you talk to each other and how you think and what your standards are and your expectations, and so that takes a lot of energy. So it's kind of a new proposition every year.
And for you that might be helpful in some ways, might it because they're not going to be hearing the same message from your year after year.
You're going to be a new group of.
Guys coming in try and understand what you're trying to teach.
Well, I kind of like the same message, you know, if it's working. So yeah, after a while they get sick of it, but you know, hopefully they listen and hopefully the message resonates and hopefully you're saying the right thing. You know. I tend to focus on, you know, the things that matter. Keep the main thing, the main thing. So my message I have a thing I write at the top of my notebook. Everybody, you know, keep the message tight, you know, give them things that are that
they that they're thinking about, that matter. You know, the more you say, the less they listen at times. So so let's just keep the message tight, you know, or I say, actually say, don't let the message get too big. So for me, I'd rather, you know, have guys that hear it over and over and over. You know, if you have kids that are seventeen eighteen years old, like, you know, they don't necessarily hear you the first time, right,
So it's the same thing with these guys. You know, they might look like they're you know, they put their uniforms on and we assume that they're more mature and older, but they're still you know, like we had a kid, o Cyrus Gilbert who's probably gonna start at corner in our first game in a week and a half, who just turned eighteen two days ago. You know, he just turned eighteen. So these are still you know, young men, so they need to hear it over and over and over and over again.
Yea, Cyrus is a twenty year old corner. I watched him today. He's got some talent.
Yeah, he's a good player.
And you've also brought back some of your former players to help on the staff, which is kind of cool. I was with Deronta Jones on the on the sideline talking.
To him a little bit. He's in the recruiting area a little bit. He was.
I felt like I was getting recruited. He was. He was so enthusiastic. He's telling a good story to me about like why he came here and why he stayed here and how it worked out for him. And I'm like, man, if I'm a kid sitting in some you know, in my mother's living room, and I hear this kid, I'm a lot more apt to think hard about yu Kon.
Yeah, Dronte and Caleb Anthony Jeelani was with us right now. He's not Jackson Mitchell's with us. It's something that I've always tried to do, is bring guys back into the program that had a lot of investment in the program. You know, you get a guy like like Ronte and he's working in recruiting, but he's also out on the field helping coach. Same with Caleb, who was a corner here. I don't remember Caleb Anthony three years ago when he
hurt his knee. And I'm really proud of Caleb because through all this, he just graduated yesterday and it was really cool to see that. And he wants to be a coach, and so we're giving him those opportunities to be coaches. I guess the one of the other fun things is that they all live with Kathy and I at our house right across the street. We got we got a full house right now. But it's all I think it's important to bring those guys back and help
them get started and what they want to do. And they've been great to have around the program.
And you got another, you get another more on the coaching staff. Yeah, I saw that on the list here.
Trey.
I haven't met him yet, but he must have been an important guy on the staff. Yeah, he's a Gopher. No, he's a little man on the total fold.
No, you know, it's my youngest son, Trey, and he thinks he wants to be a football coach. And we'll see how he feels about that in a few weeks. You know, he's been grinding a way. He's in there about six am. He gets home about eleven thirty every night. I don't really see him much. I don't really talk to him much, but he's working hard, and you know, we'll see if he becomes the third generation of More as the a football came.
And your dad is ninety. He's still going strong.
With He's a he's a beast. And if you saw the video, like, yeah, he's come on, yeah, he works hard, he's he puts me to shame.
Yeah, he's special, that guy. Uh, this practice today I watched. I was curious because I saw you taking a lot of notes and obviously you're overseeing everything now. And at the end of practice, I asked you about your notes.
What is all that stuff?
And you were pointing out a couple of scribbles, and tell me what you're doing when you're doing that. I mean, you're watching everything, but you're you're certainly notating things.
Is it individual? Is it team stuff? What do you do? It's everything.
It's uh, plays that I want to make sure that I that I show the players on film and a team environment. It's situations that come up. Uh, it's things that I think we need to improve on. It's points of emphasis that the you know, just kind of pop into your head.
Uh.
You know, it's stream games. I'm always scribbling things down as well. It's just you know, something pops into your mind or in your head and you don't want to forget it, and you write it down, and then you address it with the team later, with the staff, later you make an adjustment to a practice plan. I just don't want to forget anything. I want to make sure that we're very detailed and covering all our bases. So I just I have a tendency to write things down.
It helps me remember things, you know. I'm like you. You know, we're getting up there a little bit, so we are, we are. I make a list. I've started to actually put my notes on my phone, but I'm not going to take a phone out to practice, that's for sure, So I have to write it down.
Now, you've coached a lot of great coaches over the years, I mean Bill Wallash and people like that.
Did any of those guys do that kind of thing? Yeah?
They all do. Yeah, coaches take now, all head coaches take notes. I mean, yeah, you have to. It's your responsibility. You have to pay attention. You have to be ready to make adjustments, you have to remember things, you have to be able to point things out. I mean, I'm dealing with one hundred and eighteen players and things come up, and yeah, so I just I just write it down.
Sorry, I remember it all right?
You got ten, twelve days, whatever it is until the first game this week starting today, were you thinking a little bit about your opponent? Are you still thinking about what this team's going to be both?
Today was kind of a transitional day, as you saw. So some of our work was against you know, we call it against ourselves, a generic practice Yukon versus Yukon, but a large portion was dedicated to our first opponent, and so we transitioned into where we're always just going against each into giving each other a look that we're going to see on a Saturday against an opponent that
we play. So a little bit new for some of the younger guys, the freshmen that are on what we call the scout team, they're the guys that are stimulating the look of the opponent we're going to play. Most of the high school guys, you know, they never did that. They were the best players on their team, and now they're not, and so they have to learn how to
do that. So there's just a lot of teaching that goes up, really procedural teaching that goes along as well as x's and o's, and we talked about earlier the cultural teaching as well. So you know, You're just always trying to educate these young men on how they and how we can be successful together.
And unlike the pros, no exhibition games for the college guys. So they have a scrimmage at Wrenstler on Saturday, and we'll talk more about how getting this team ready for a week from Saturday builds up day to day as we go forward.
Jimura with us
The Yukon Football Coach and the Yukon Football Coaching Show here from the DML in Hartford,